Macadamian Blog

Why HTML5 Makes Sense for Mobile

These days there are more and more mobile devices that support rich software applications. Since the iPhone, we've seen the Blackberry, the Palm Pre and Android all start their own app stores, and surely Windows Phone 7 won't be far behind. With all of these options, how do you decide which ones to develop software for? Porting the same native application to five different platforms is expensive, but only supporting a few adds the risk of alienating users with non-supported devices. Fortunately, thanks to HTML5, it's now possible to develop one version of your application that works across all these platforms.

HTML5 is a new standard for developing web-based applications with rich interfaces similar to what can traditionally only be achieved in a desktop environment or by using browser plug-ins such as Adobe Flash. Support for HTML5 is being built right into all modern web browsers, with many features already available. While this is very good for the web community, it's also very good for the mobile space; all modern smartphones come with a browser that is working to support HTML5. This means that instead of re-writing the same application for each mobile platform, one single version can be written in HTML5 that works across all of them.